Radical
and conservative: which aspect of FrankBridge do you know
best or prefer?

You
may realize that my opening gambit is also the title of Anthony
Payne’s succinct but very useful book on Bridge (Thames, London,
1994) emphasising the extraordinary change that came over
his style approximately by the end of the First War. What
is curious is that although he was never a strongly English
composer in a pastoral sense, having always had a foot in
the French and indeed in the Germanic, Romantic camps, after
the war he became even more influenced by developments in
Germany and central Europe. By time of the 3rd
String Quartet (1925) you feel that Bridge has been feeding
on a surfeit of Zemlinsky, Schoenberg’s 2nd Quartet
and certainly Alban Berg with whom he seems to have had a
very special affinity. He appears to all intents and purposes
to be a completely different composer from the one we encounter
here, who arranges ‘Sally in our Alley’ and ‘Londonderry Air’.
And yet … and yet, there are moments in these early pieces,
and this disc is totally devoted to his first phase, when
one feels that the seeds of his later style are beginning
to form. As Payne remarks “From the outset of his career Bridge
had possessed an exceptionally enquiring mind and was alert
to new developments of style and language”.

Many
collectors will know that Naxos have recorded with Maggini
Quartet two discs of Bridge’s Quartets Numbers 2 and 4 (8.557283)
and 1 and 3 (8.557269). This disc of mostly slighter pieces
was brought out in the mid-1990s at the time Anthony Payne
prepared the new edition of his book. It has, I believe, been
re-launched to fit with a complete Bridge String Quartets
project.

It
seems odd that during the very darkest days of World War I,
Bridge was writing little arrangements of folk-songs for the
parlour. As I have said, after the war he took on another
hue, but before it we have several of these charming works
which constitute a major part of his chamber music. I’ve no
doubt that he was able to make a little money on them, but
we should not overlook how well they are put together - composed
in fact. For example in the ‘Londonderry Air’ the tune only
gradually emerges. I was reminded of Bridge’s most important
pupil Benjamin Britten whose ‘Lachrymae’ only exposes Dowland’s
famous theme at the end. I wonder if that’s where Britten
got the idea? ‘Sir Roger de Coverley’ has an extended counter-subject
towards the end of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to fight with. In ‘Sally
in our Alley’ we hear the melody only in a fragmentary state
before it finally appears at the end of its four minutes of
clever counterpoint.

The
three ‘Novelletten’ recall in their title Schumann and indeed
are suitably miniature. These works foreshadow the Bridge
of later years especially in the regular shifts of tonality
in the first movement and in the chromatics of parts of the
second. Sometimes Debussian harmonies also creep across the
horizon.

It
is, I suspect, these first three works (Phantasy Quartet,
‘Novelletten’ and ‘Three Idylls’) that make the disc particularly
valuable.

There
are three works by Bridge with the title ‘Phantasie’. The
idea was that of W.W Cobbett who wanted contemporary composers
to revive the Elizabethan Phantasy or Fantasy form and who
put up a substantial prize for a competition. In Bridge’s
case it stimulated an all-important approach to form which
lived with him all of his life. As well as this quartet, his
first attempt, we have the Phantasie Piano Trio which is quite
a long work of 1907. It won the Cobbett prize. Then there’s
the Phantasie Piano Quartet of 1910. I heard a rare performance
of the trio recently at the Lake District Summer Music Festival
played wonderfully by very young performers. For me it is
the finest of the three, however the Magginis make out the
best case for the Quartet that I have ever heard. It is in
three fairly equal sections which should follow without a
break although they are separately tracked on the CD. It starts
with a bold Baxian gesture, followed by a March tune. By the
finale the music has metamorphosed into a lighter mood. To
me it lacks the necessary Phantasy elements, the continuous
contrapuntal development which Cobbett really expected and
which Bridge was so successfully to achieve in the other two
works.

The
‘Three Idylls’ are often dark and intense but also very lyrical.
Here Ravel is suggested especially the String Quartet. These
are most attractive little pieces, three in all, which should
be much better known.

The
final work on the disc is the world premiere recording of
‘Three Pieces’ which I have to say are there mainly for those
with a ‘completist’ sensibility.

This
disc then is a fine supplement to the Maggini’s Bridge cycle.
It seems to me that the players are in complete accord with
the style and needs of the composer. They have, after all
been living with this music for practically a decade. They
throw another light on the composer. It all adds to the burgeoning
view that he has been much neglected and that he ranks surely
alongside his contemporary Holst as one of the finest British
composers of the first half of the twentieth century.

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